While Americans have long clashed over our country’s cruel and bigoted past, Germans have undertaken one of the most thoroughgoing efforts of any nation on the planet to reckon with their history. Germany, perhaps more than any other country, has attempted to pull out by the roots its homegrown variant of the reactionary spirit — the tendency of opponents of social change to choose hierarchy over democracy, trying to constrain or even topple democracy to protect hierarchies of wealth and status.

The Nazis were born out of disgust with post-World War I Weimar democracy, led by men furious about both the new government’s weakness and acceptance of the Jewish minority into German society. After Nazism brought Germany to ruin, preventing a reactionary resurgence became one of the central goals of the country’s subsequent leaders.

So it’s all the more extraordinary that in the past few years, Germany’s far right has been on the rise.

In 2015, at the peak of the global refugee crisis, German chancellor Angela Merkel announced an open-door policy for those fleeing violence in Syria and elsewhere. In response, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party, a Euroskeptic faction without a single seat in Parliament, morphed into a virulently xenophobic force calling for Germany to slam Merkel’s open door shut.

But its rise illustrates something vitally important: That Germany, of all countries, could fail to prevent a surge in reactionary antidemocratic politics suggests there’s something eternal and enduring about the reactionary spirit. And there is something about our current time period that makes it especially likely to flourish — not just in Germany, but around the world.

  • maxinstuff@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    It’s been clear for some time that centrists are sick of being screamed at and called nazis by an increasingly noisy far-left contingent.

    If you genuinely think the Republican Party are fascist nazis… I mean there is simply no discussion that will be productive.

    • half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Their dude literally said vermin.

      We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.

      The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.

      It’s poisoning the blood of our country, it’s so bad and people are coming in with disease, people are coming in with every possible thing that you can have.

      We are one people, one family and one glorious nation under God.

      All great cultures of the past perished only because the original creative race died out from blood poisoning.

      The struggle between the two worlds can permit no compromises. It’s either Us or Them!

      Which was said by Donnie and which was said by an actual real historical Nazi? Try not to Goog first.

      spoiler

      The last two are Hizzle and Bennie.

      Kind of wild to me that all the other quotes are Donnie T. I think it’s pretty clear why repubs get the reputation they have.